But the crusading privacy journalist has plenty of complimentary things to say about how the Fox prime-time host conducts herself on air.

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“She has a lower tolerance for being fed incoherent tripe from her own side than the average cable news TV host,” Greenwald said in an email. “Most Fox and MSNBC hosts treat even the most blatant idiocy with respect if it advances their party’s political agenda for the vapid cable news partisan controversy of the day. Kelly, by contrast, seems to be often contemptuous of incoherent blather even from her own side, sometimes openly so, and that further distinguishes her.”

That’s high praise considering the source. But it’s in keeping with the raves that Kelly is winning less than a year since the debut of her solo show, “The Kelly File,” which airs at 9 p.m. weekdays.

Kelly’s career is red hot right now, and she’s achieved an unusual status for a host in the middle of the often-ideological cable new wars: Kelly’s earning respect across the political divide. She prods interview subjects whether they’re from the left or the right, at times treating them like hostile witnesses; her questions are pointed, and she’s quick to interrupt an answer that’s off point or meandering — no matter who it’s from.

Members of Congress who have been interviewed commend her lively style; competing producers praise the content on her show; even left-leaning journalists like Greenwald, among others, say they have to respect Kelly’s forceful challenges to the right; and former colleagues and media watchers say she’s just got that “X factor” — the mix of qualities that produce a cable news superstar.

Recognition has come from viewers — she often comes in a close second to ratings king Bill O’Reilly — and from the press, too. Kelly, 43, was the only woman in media to be included in Time magazine’s 100-most-influential-people list this year.

While the Fox host is credited with not being afraid to grill Fox friends like Dick Cheney, a review of her top show topics for the month of June reads like House Republican talking points: the decision to trade five Taliban prisoners for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl; the ascension of ISIL in Iraq; the growing immigration crisis on the southern border; lost emails from former IRS executive Lois Lerner; and the case of a Christian woman sentenced to death in Sudan for her faith.

Watch just a few of Kelly’s faceoffs and it’s not hard to figure out she was a lawyer before becoming a television journalist.

“She’s a very good questioner, and you can tell she’s an attorney,” Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), a former federal prosecutor who is now leading the House inquiry into Benghazi, said in an interview. “I think you always bolster your credibility when you show objectivity and when you are an equal opportunity questioner. … No one is your client, you’re not protecting anyone. Obviously, when you’re attractive, you can get away with things that ugly people like me can’t get away with.”

Leaving no doubt who’s in charge, Kelly steers the interviews to make news, quickly calling out guests for being “boring” or cutting them off if she deems their answers not clear enough for the average viewer.

In June, for instance, she shut down Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) as he tried to explain the nuclear option.

“My bad for asking a lawyer and a U.S. senator to try to explain something so complex in a quick 30 seconds,” Kelly said, adding later in the program, “If you’re boring, I tend to just call you out.”

In another memorable and widely covered putdown, Kelly interrupted Bill Ayers and told him, “You sound like — with respect — Osama bin Laden” when the ex-Weather Underground leader was trying to justify the use of violence.

Kelly may be tough when she wants to be, but the ease with which she shifts from prosecutor to bubbly anchor giggling over a “throwback Thursday” photo can be disarming.

“I always felt she was solid and excited about her interviews because I knew they’d be spot on,” said Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat who regularly appears on Fox News. “They’d be fair. They wouldn’t be slanted or tainted, trying to get you in the gotcha moment. Megyn puts you at ease. You don’t look at her as a threat, as someone just trying to get you to get somewhere else.”

Brent Bozell, president of the conservative-leaning Media Research Center and a frequent guest on Kelly’s show, went so far as to liken her to the legendary NBC newsman Tim Russert.

“If you have something that is of substance, she will sit back and let you say it and not feel the need to interject,” Bozell said. “The journalist who was the master of this was Tim Russert; it’s why he was seen as the gold standard in the business. Megyn does that as well. She’ll ask you a probing question, and if you’ve got a 60-second answer, you’ll get 60 seconds to answer. If it takes you five seconds, that’s what she’ll give you. I do know that when I go on her show, I can prepare a thorough response … as opposed to other machine-gun interviews.”

Kelly can be unpredictable, too. She slammed RedState.com editor and Fox News contributor Erick Erickson last year for saying society was collapsing after a study showed an increasing number of women were becoming families’ sole or primary breadwinner.

“What makes you dominant and me submissive, and who died and made you scientist in chief?” Kelly said to Erickson.

Erickson said women can’t “have it all” but that he’s not judging women who work.

“You are judging them, you are because you come out very clearly and say women who choose to work … are imposing a worse future on their children,” Kelly said, cutting Erickson off. “I was offended by your piece, nonetheless. I didn’t like what you wrote one bit.”

Shortly before her show’s debut, Kelly, who Fox declined to make available for an interview for this story, told Jay Leno that she was a “straight news anchor,” not an ideologue, and she said during an appearance with O’Reilly that she wasn’t aiming to become the “female Bill.”

Observers on the left and the right say she’s mostly lived up to that pledge.

Kelly made waves for taking on former Vice President Cheney in a June interview.